Washington- A Reflection

Wow.

What a trip.

What a crazy, awesome, amazing trip.

As most of you blog fans (rock on) know, on March 12-13 a very special group of makers went to Washington DC.  To prepare for the trip, we were all assigned embarrassing and occasionally star wars-related nicknames.

Me (Katherine): KGB, Russian Spy (because of my initials)
Oliver: OZ, Olly, Olive, Olivia, Ollypop, Beyonce (don't ask me where that came from), and Albert (long story)
Sharanya: Shoe, Sharan-yoda
Phanisree: Phuhsomething-something
Sundhar: Shun-dhar, Sun-Darth

But enough about the weird nicknames.
Anyway, looking back from my trip to Washington, I learned a lot of things.  I learned that while forcing us to collaborate, which is the PRISM term for "don't bite anyone's head off because they accidentally poked your rover", might have been annoying in the short term, being able to present how we worked together to do things was really rewarding in the end.

I must admit, it was really nerve-wracking to have to speak in front of tons of principals and politicians.  We actually got to facilitate the whole thing, while Dr. MC stood in the back, adding some little stuff and running the presentation.  Speaking of Dr.  MC, she really taught us that we have a voice and it matters, and there's no way we could have done it without her, but still, WOW was it tough speaking to all those people.  As Oliver put it, "Sundhar, I need to ask you a favor.  If I faint on stage, which I inevitably will, will you please run over and drag my dead body out of the spotlight?"

It was a real honor to meet all the people there, such as Governor Wise, who is the president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, and the former governor of West Virginia.  He was an awesome guy, funny, nice, et cetera.  In fact, when I made someone else's day by accidentally leaving my entire $100 in a taxicab, Digital Learning Day desperately tried to track it down, and when they couldn't, Governor Wise personally presented me a replacement for the money, single-handedly restoring my faith (mostly) in politicians. 

Maker Fridays Are Back!

What do we need?

It’s not easy being G+T.  We ask a lot from our teachers.  However, this post is basically what we want and need in the classroom.

We need challenge and choice.  We should be able to do projects as we choose, and different learning styles in the classroom is vital to having kids’ needs.  We need to be given engaging and interesting projects.  We need to be able to develop 21st century competencies and persistence.  You can’t do that with a worksheet!

Beyond that, teachers should try to counteract the belief that “failure is bad” that seems to be so pervasive in our culture.  In the PRISM room, we all know that failure is a learning opportunity and can lead to success.  However, in some other classes, people are so concerned with not making a mistake that they never test the boundaries of their knowledge.  Teachers need to give us support and teach us that failure is expected and encouraged.  If necessity is the mother of invention, the father is failure and prototyping.

What we DON’T need in our classrooms are endless worksheets and rote memorization.  Teachers should foster curiosity and a love of learning, and these don’t develop when kids don’t care about the work and feel like they have to do it or they’ll get in trouble.

The two best way to build a classroom where every student feels eager to learn is by giving them a voice. We need to know that our voice matters and we should share our views to help improve our learning.  Students can be surprisingly insightful, especially when it comes to their own learning.

The other way is to teach not just reading, riting, and ‘rithmetic, but also the “soft skills”- perseverance, creativity, communication, problem solving and more.  School teaches two things- the “what”- photosynthesis, ancient rome, algebra, and the “how”- life skills like resilience and responsibility- that will stay with us forever.

What do we, the students, need from our teachers?

Being a student in middle school is not easy. However, being a student in a middle school with teachers that teach straight out of the textbook is even worse. We, as students, need teachers that teach us things that are outside of the textbook, things that we will need for the rest of our lives. I'm not saying that we don't need writing or math skills in our lives, but skills like working with a group, not giving up, and being open-minded are also extremely important.

Teachers should challenge us. They should give us, students, difficult tasks that doesn't just require knowing facts and figures, but thinking outside of the box, and coming up with different ways of solving a hard problem, even when it seems impossible. In other words, teachers should have us do activities that teach us persistence, particularly to not give up, no matter what happens. Just because the "traditional approach" doesn't work, kids should try another way to solve a problem instead of giving up. This leads me to my next point, innovation.

We are now in the 21st century. No more obsolete ways of teaching, or outdated ways of solving problems by flipping through a textbook. As 21st century learners, we, the kids, need to be innovative and creative when it comes to learning. Beyond what we learn in textbooks, we need teachers to encourage us to be original, and to not fear failure, for failure leads to success. In the WWP school district, we are now using Chromebooks in nearly all of our classes. It is our textbook, calendar, notebook, and much more. We have said goodbye to the traditional pen and paper ways of learning. We now have the entire internet at our fingertips, letting us explore other ways to overcome challenges. 

One of the 21st century competencies, "collaborative team member", is no longer restrained to a physical meeting. Google hangouts has allowed us to work on group projects from the comforts of our own homes. Google Drive allows us to all work on the same document at the same time, edit each others' work, and post comments on the final products. By using new technologies, we are redefining what it means to be a collaborative team member, Of course, teachers still need to provide us the opportunities to work with a group in order for us to learn this skill.

How should teachers empower students.

We all have complained about a teacher sometime in our lives, but teachers are really necessary. One might think," teachers teach and so do textbooks so why don't we just read textbooks?" and another might reply, "it's to control the students." Quite the contrary actually, teachers are there to let students go free because in my opinion, no one can learn without wanting to learn. Teachers are here to empower students by teaching students how to learn! Because no one is in school forever (unless you are Michael Nicholson of course). In our future lives we are not going to have study guides and textbooks to look at, we are going to have our minds and whatever we can get our hands on so I think teachers should empower students by teaching them how to learn because as Clay P. Bedford said "You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives."

Maker Movement- Inspires Creativity

Being a Maker does not mean tinkering away with no goal, there is a lot to it. A lot includes, people screaming, "NOOOOOOOOOO!" because they cannot find baseboards to build their ultimate creation. This is an inspiration. Littlebits and makers fit together each complimenting the struggle to make things work. To be a Maker you need creativity; to use littleBits you need to be able to channel creativity.
We snap together littleBits so that the juice of the battery flows to give intended results. This can be a war or an easy achievement. It all depends on our creations.

"Where does the creativity come in?", you make ask.  Well you have to depend on the resources around you. Say, you have to put together multiple littleBit circuits for you creation. What do you do? The way the regular brain works, "Oh, no! Well, this mess we can't continue. What was I thinking?" the negative thoughts are endless. But the way the maker sees it is, "Okay what do I have, and what do I need? Is there anything here I can use to put this together?" As a result you will find something. No one ever said to be creative you had to use special tools! We use tape, paper, and confetti to make it work. Makers face problems that lead them to use their imagination - their creative force.

Preparing for #DLDay

.@thomascmurray @wwpscience show how #edtech has made a difference in education at their schools. #DLDay pic.twitter.com/DuYnIWRN9s

— Digital Learning Day (@OfficialDLDay) February 5, 2014

.@wwpscience presenting #science lesson with #edtech. #DLDay https://t.co/uS3hy42AEv

— Digital Learning Day (@OfficialDLDay) February 5, 2014

Last year, I was honored to present at Digital Learning Day in Washington at the Library of Congress. I had my presentation and all of the tools: littleBits, rovers, student work examples, and the ever so important stack of business cards. Truth be told, I felt incredibly bare. Student work, and the impact of great partnerships, needs to be shared by the students. I showed the pictures and videos of the high school students building their rovers and collaborating with their elementary students, and guests at my station were, at least superficially, impressed. Nothing I said about how great it was for the students to explore local habitats with student-created rovers could have really captured the excitement, the joy, and the learning I saw in the high school and elementary school students in Ms. Bugge's and Ms. Rizziello's classes. As the groups left, I exhaled and hoped I had done the program, and the students, justice.

This year, I am heading down to DC with an army. My amazing group of 6th grade Maker Ambassadors will be leading the discussion on ways to have a student-centered classroom, how to embed activities that develop growth mindset, and how the maker movement inspires creativity. I will not need to speak about student voice because their voices will be heard. Nothing makes me more content. There will be no need for me to chime in with my opinions about how technology can transform learning experiences. The teachers will hear it first hand from the students, the modern learners, who crave these opportunities. The students will be leading the show on, well, how they are leading the show in our classroom. I help them on their journey and get out of their way. It's what I have always done as a teacher. This year, the students will be on the stage as the world listens. I will be there, continuing to support, motivate, empower, and smile proudly as their guide on the side.

How to Explain Growth Mindset to Students

Growth Mindset is a great new way of looking at things that can have amazing effects on classrooms and learning.  For all the teachers reading this post, this is how it can be explained in a way that's easy for even little kids to understand.
Growth mindset is the opposite of fixed mindset.  With a fixed mindset, you think that your brain can't change and you  can't get any smarter.  If you fail a math test, it's because you're stupid, not because you didn't study or hadn't learned it.
Meanwhile, with growth mindset, you believe that the brain can get better, stronger, and smarter.  Guess who's right?  The second person!
For an easy way to see how a growth mindset can be beneficial, check out this simple chart.

Mindset	Fixed	Growth
Thoughts	I can’t change my mind I can’t get any smarter	My brain is changeable If I challenge my brain, I’ll get smarter
After a tough math test...	I didn’t do well on the test.  I’m stupid	I didn’t do well on the test.  This is something I need to work on
Actions	Cheat, don’t study because they believe it won’t help	Work hard and believe they can do better next time
The Outcome	Bad Grades	Good Grades

What is a student centered classroom?

What is a student centered classroom?

A student centered classroom is one that is based around the students' needs, not the teacher's. A teacher's curriculum and planning for class should represent what the student wants to learn/needs to learn, not what the teacher has to teach. A teacher can come up with a prompt, or challenge, for the students, but it must be the students that solve the problem, not the teacher telling them how to. In the Maker program, Dr.MC gives us challenges, and we find solutions for them. When Dr.MC told us to build a rover out of LittleBits, she didn't tell us how to do it, she just gave us the challenge. It was up to us, the Makers, on how we wanted to go about doing it. In a classroom, if a group of students were weak in one topic, say, probability, but the teacher only taught geometry, the students' needs would not be met. Instead, the teacher should alter his/her lesson plan to include probability. In a student centered classroom, the student not only enjoys the class, but most importantly, they learn the most.

After the 1st Trip to Millstone!

Collaborating with the elementary school students. 

Today, we traveled to Millstone River Elementary, the 4th-5th grade school nearby Community.  We had 1 goal in mind: Teach the MAGIC kids about littleBits.
MAGIC is the elementary school equivalent of PRISM, and as we stared back at the sea of 4th grade faces, we knew awesomeness was in store.

Working through littleBit challenges.

It started with chaos.  We were all rushing around in different directions, trying to do stuff.  Sundhar and I were kinda competing for chances to talk.  It was not exactly the way we wanted to start.
But eventually, we got through all that stuff, and started showing the kids how the Bits worked.
"They fit together with magnets, so you can't put them together wrong, and, like, electrocute yourself."
"Green bits do something.  They might glow, or spin, or annoy eighth graders..."
 "Who knows what THIS thingummybob is?" (points to a battery)
Yeah.  It was pretty crazy.
After that, we turned the 4th graders loose to experiment on their own.  We challenged them to make thing that moved, glowed, and made sound.
Now we heard them start really getting into the "maker" mindset.
"Hey, I wonder what happens if I flip that switch?"
"Check this out!"
"Hey, how'd you do that?"
"I wonder how that works..."
And then, I heard the best one of all.
"Hey 6th graders!  This is AWESOME!"
Yes.
It was.

How Bits Work (The basics)

How do bits work, really?  I mean, it isn't like the buzzers will just magically beep and the LEDs just magically glow.  So this is what I learned about what makes the littleBits work the way they do.
Everything starts with energy.  No, this isn't some crazy acupuncture lesson, it's just science.
There are multiple forms of energy, such as electric, heat, sound, nuclear (which doesn't really apply to the LittleBits), and more.
The battery stores the electric energy, which is transferred to the blue module.
When you attach a green module, that electric energy is turned into different kinds of energy.  If you attach a buzzer, it will turn into sound energy.  If you attach an LED, it turns into light energy, and et cetera.
Now on to pink mods.  Say you have a switch.  When it's switched to "off," the circuit is interrupted because the wire inside isn't connected.  When it's switched to "on," it connects and the green mod does whatever it's going to do.


Some Bit Pics:

Pre-Washington Thoughts and Realizations

A month ago, Dr. MC told us that we were going to Washington DC to present to many people and meet congressmen and senators, we didn't know what to think, or how to react. Now, a little more than one week until the day we leave for DC, I finally know what to think, and what I realized in the past month about organizing a presentation working with a team.

Organizing a Presentation

Organizing a presentation is no easy task. The hardest part, in our case, is getting our LittleBit rover ready for presenting. The rover has gone through many prototypes, but every day, a new problem seems to pop up. Be it the wiring, batteries, or treads, there is always something that goes wrong. As a Maker Ambassador, I have learned to deal with problems as they arise, and if I can't solve them, I work around them. If I can't find a pair of small treads for the rover, but have a lot of large treads, I alter the rover's wheels so they fit in large treads instead. Of course, these are only problems with the "prop". Preparing for questions people may ask is another hard part. My fellow Makers and I must be ready to answer any question. This means we have to know exactly how the LittleBits and our rover works. However, as much as we plan, we all know, deep down, that there will always be that one technical glitch, or that one question, that will stump us. When that happens, we will only be able to improvise, and come up with our best answer, or solution to the problem.

Working With a Team

Working with a team is no easy thing, but working with a group of eccentric and quirky Makers is even more of a challenge. At first, our largest problem was communication. I would come upstairs to work on the rover, only to find that it was disassembled. Then, I would have to waste twenty grueling minutes rebuilding the parts of the rover that were completed yesterday. Also, sometimes a team isn't focused. It's good to fan out and each work on a different part of the presentation, but eventually, a team needs to come back together and fit together the different "pieces" or parts they are working on, into a final presentation. We as Makers divide up our jobs, but we are inclined to completely ignore what another group is working on. In other words, working together is not easy. The most valuable lesson that I learned from this experience is that you can't always get people to do what you want to complete. Instead, you have to work with them, and compromise.

Being part of Makers this year in PRISM has taught me many important life lessons, and valuable skills that I will use for the rest of my life.

How the Maker Movement Connects Students to Engineering and Technology